How I ended up with so much Hacker News karma (2012) | Hacker News Reader

How I ended up with so much Hacker News karma (2012)

blog.jgc.org

84 pointscreolabs88 comments

Some headline numbers: I've been on Hacker News for well over 5 years (I joined on July 2, 2007)

Ha! when I wrote that it was 5 years... now it's > 8 years. I think the same conclusion still applies: "So, to answer my original question about how I ended up with that much karma: slowly, consistently, over years by submitting things that people like."

HN Karma functions much like the odometer on a car.

Use the car more frequently and for longer distances and the odometer will advance more rapidly.

Someone downstream said "A good trick is to post a solid counterpoint as a reply to the currently topmost comment: people are more likely to vote on comments near the top"

So I'm looking for a counterpoint except that this is actually quite a good analogy (ignoring the quibble that a good driver can move to a new car with a fresh odometer but retain a good driving record. Or that there is no legal odometer equivalent to being downvoted)

Edit: grammar

Counterpoint: The Cuckoo's Calling, by Robert Galbraith, sold 500 copies. The Cuckoo's Calling, by JK Rowling, sold a 100,000+ copies.

Sooooo tempted to downvote you just to try and prove you wrong :)

I suspect your single downvote would be have been countered by several people supplying corrective upvotes, so they could have ended up with more upvotes than they would have done without the initial downvote.

Unless we all decide to take part in this prank :). Coordination isn't that hard, right? ;).

That's called a voting ring and the mods with come down like a ton of soft fluffy teddy bears.

Didn't you post a nice link about that recently?

I did. But isn't science about trying to prove yourself wrong? :).

What strikes me is I hardly ever submit. I mostly comment (outside the tent pissing in). When I do submit I often get surprisingly nice amounts of karma. I just rarely discover something not already been submitted.

Nothing groundbreaking, but good analysis rarely is.

I'd be interested to see the relationship between comment karma and age of post though - do earlier comments always get more attention?

I distinctly remember saying "I'm not going to post any more when I hit 2000 karma." Then it was 3000.

I even set noprocrast to something like 100 years, and quit cold turkey for a while... And then got pg to reset it for me.

A hundred people are looking at this like "ok."

"How did I succeed? I just followed the rules."

First hand, everyone sees that as bullshit. I like your contributions to this community. Don't be ashamed to say, "cuz I'm awesome like that."

You'd be amazed how powerful compound interest is.

You've got 10 times my karma. You win. :)

Holy shit, 55,000 HN karma? And I thought I had a problem.

Me? A problem? It's tptacek you should be worried about... he's got 226,754 karma.

I'm really wondering how you can reach such a number... Thomas?

I will take the liberty of answering for Thomas here.

Most importantly, write a lot of comments, over years. Karma is primarily an odometer. I get 2X the karma per comment, but Thomas writes 4X the comments.

Develop a beat on which you are known as a source of expert, reliable knowledge. There are other security people on HN, but Thomas is fairly reliably stapled to the top of any thread about security. That is not not justified.

Write well. Have a voice. You can pick out most of Thomas' comments, and virtually all of his value-adding comments, immediately by his writing style. He's one of the five best writers on the site, without question. (Honest opinion rather than playing praise-my-friend-and-cofounder. It's not a close call.) You could ask him "Thomas, I am going to name one item in your kitchen. Write about it for two minutes. Ready? Parsnip, go." and it would be one of the ~10 best written comments on HN that day.

There exists an observation I can make here about choosing which threads to participate in, which would have the effect of increasing one's karma but which is not necessarily something HN wants to encourage. I have 100% confidence that "Boosting my karma score" is not the reason why Thomas chooses threads to engage in, but be that as it may, I'll add it for completeness: the high-heat low-light threads about nerd politics result in getting lots of upvotes for fairly little effort, regardless of whether you conform with HN's community norms or whether you are the designated contrary voice. (Designated contrary voice is worth a lot of upvotes if you do it well.)

Not related, but worth mentioning in case it isn't obvious: he really, really doesn't care about his karma score. Profoundly does not care. It happens to reward him for being "message board nerd" (his favored phrasing for this psychograph) but Thomas would play message board nerd for free and, indeed, at substantial cost.

The leaderboard stopped showing karma scores because I asked PG and then 'dang to do that. I'd be much happier if they eliminated accumulated karma altogether --- keep karma, keep showing comment karma to authors, but don't show accumulated karma to anyone.

I've made a bunch of friends from HN, but among my real-world friends, the HN karma thing is an embarrassment; I'm needled over it constantly.

The most under-appreciated writer on HN is 'tzs, for what it's worth.

I do not agree with your recommendation to hide score information. Especially individual comments score.

Individual comments score helps me to decide what comment to pay more attention to.

Of course they system could be improved by counting comment wait based on my past preferences.

(E.g. if my upvotes correlate with patio11 upvotes, then patio11 upvote is more valuable to me than average user's upvotes).

But even without upvote score calcualtion improvement - it is better to have existing "averaged" score, than no score at all.

Finally, if vanity is not your thing - just do not pay attention to your own score. Upvotes score information is valuable for other reasons.

He's in his own league

> consistency over a long period

That's the secret to all success!

what is your most upvoted comment?

830 points Submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5450410

201 points comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4073309#up_4073928

A few observations from someone in the "Top 10" for 8 years now:

  - You're never as good as your upvotes.
  - You're never as bad as your downvotes.
  - Karma ebbs & flows with the audience, which changes dramatically.
  - I sense no correlation between karma & quality of real life.
  - I sense little correlation between karma & quality of contribution.
  - I sense heavy correlation between karma & volume of participation.
  - I sense very heavy inverse correlation between karma & real work completed.

(Back to work)

This could be simply answered with a single answer that applies to any community - just post whatever panders to the average community member if you care about irrelevant counter in your profile.

I love that irrelevant counter in my profile. Especially when it goes down. It's a signal that I should stop and rethink what I wrote - is it getting downvoted because of tone? Because I'm stupid? Or because I'm right but present an unpopular opinion?

Usually it's the second.

> Or because I'm right but present an unpopular opinion?

Some opinions are neither right nor wrong, they are just point of views, and the unpopular ones tend to get downvoted--admittedly, to a lesser extent on HN than other communities, but still happens. This has the unfortunate effect that, as you point out, the downvoted author doesn't know if there was something wrong with the tone or content, or if it just happened that his/her views are unpopular.

Maybe asking for a few words (presumably in a small, unintrusive ajax form, and not visible in the main thread) as reason for downvoting could be useful, and somewhat deter "not-my-opinion-at-all" downvotes.

It goes well beyond "unpopular ones tend to get downvoted."

There are people who, having posted something "controversial" only because it bucks a common fallacy or "political correctness", will enlist all of their social media candidates to downvote someone who dared disagree with them... even if only via pointing out factual fallacies with objective references.

I took a 50-point hit once on one posting simply by posting objective references that challenged (actually, disproved) a political rant.

Like any form of "social media", it's partially a popularity contest.

Like the old slashdot "+1 interesting"?

There are nonconfrontational ways of presenting views you know are going to encounter flak. One is to do so as a question.

> There are nonconfrontational ways of presenting views you know are going to encounter flak.

True, but...

> One is to do so as a question.

...this can often come off as passive-aggressive when it is used to present a view; that's not really an improvement. If you are stating a view, just state it: to make it nonconfrontational, don't be condescending to people who disagree, don't predict that you will be downvoted into oblivion or otherwise persecuted for posting it, and generally extend the same charity to the community that you would like them to extend to your viewpoint.

>...this can often come off as passive-aggressive when it is used to present a view; that's not really an improvement. If you are stating a view, just state it: to make it nonconfrontational, don't be condescending to people who disagree, don't predict that you will be downvoted into oblivion or otherwise persecuted for posting it, and generally extend the same charity to the community that you would like them to extend to your viewpoint.

Unfortunately this doesn't work. You still tend to get downvoted into oblivion. The problem is that if you poke holes in a dubious argument, you'll get downvoted simply because people disagree with you. There is no real way around this, and I've mostly given up on commenting except when I know I won't be downvoted. I don't really give a shit about karma, it's more the idea of rudeness/negativity behind people downvoting things that they disagree with -- even if you post a logical, well thought-out argument -- that I have a problem with.

> Unfortunately this doesn't work. You still tend to get downvoted into oblivion.

No, it does work; if it didn't, I wouldn't have more than 20K Karma, often with highly upvoted posts disagreeing with posts that are also upvoted (or at least not downvoted), including from people who are higher on the leaderboard.

The idea that you get downvoted to oblivion simply for disagreeing with the majority regardless of quality on HN (whether it comes from people who describe the majority as politically right-libertarian or leftist, or pro-FSF, or those who describe it as pro-Apple, pro-Microsoft, pro-Google, or anti- any of those things -- and I've seen it from every possible side of all of those, except I don't think I've seen anyone accuse HN of having an anti-HN downvote-to-oblivion majority) is simply wrong.

Depending on basically random factors (who is reading when) posts on controversial topics that make substantial points well may occasionally get early downvotes for disagreement, but usually that gets overwhelmed, or at least neutralized, by positive votes very quickly.

It's pretty consistent. See for example my recent comment on a Parkinson's treatment where I said "there's fuck all evidence that it works", mentioning the placebo effect and overhyped science, which has -2. Perhaps people are offended by the swear word (which I thought was appropriate in the circumstances)? Perhaps I need to write a whole spiel explaining the placebo effect so I don't get instantly downvoted (I don't really have the time for that)?

This happens every time, and it's a little irritating.

I had a quick look at your comments and didn't see any comments such as this.

("downvoted into oblivion" is perhaps an exaggeration. I'm talking about -2 or -3 votes for a comment).

The -2 means that a couple of people (out of an unknown number) didn't like something. For example, some people don't agree with you and think that it's never appropriate to use foul language.

Most of the time you get downvotes on something, the number of downvotes is small. Only the cases where something is massively downvoted and flagged out of existence can be readily explained.

Suppose 5000 people look at your posting and almost all of them agree that sometimes it is appropriate to swear, and your posting is one of those occasions: but two out of those 5000 don't agree, and downvote you. Well, there you go: you have the tacit support of 4998/5000 readers (just not enough to give you an upvote for it) and two downvotes.

Being acceptable to the majority in some "common sense" way is not enough to spare your comment. Either your comment has to have appeal so that it attracts upvotes from a significant segment of the site readers who come across it, or, failing that, a comment which doesn't attract upvotes, has to avoid raising the ire of minorities.

(Regarding the use "minorities": I'm using that here to denote absolutely any rare trait, background or world outlook whatsoever (where "rare" doesn't mean "odd" or "strange"); I am not specifically referring to "ethnic minorities".)

For the above reasons, situations where a comment is reduced to 0, -1 or even -2 are not always easily explained, other than by the general remark that it is probably less than "spotlessly inoffensive". (Imagine the ways in which some element in the comment might rub someone somewhere the wrong way, and you have a halfway plausible explanation.)

Only when some comment is massively flagged out of existence is there an obvious plausible explanation.

Yes, those were unfair downvotes.

I'm guessing the shortness of your comment and the negativity without sources made a difference? But that's just a guess.

That's how the site works. If thousands of users think nothing of your comment, but two downvote it, there you go: two downvotes.

On HN, bland comments which attract no upvotes have to be spotlessly inoffensive to every imaginable mindset so that they survive the 24 hour "statute of limitations" for downvotes.

... keeping in mind that some people punish blandness itself with a downvote!

Yes, that makes sense (and thanks for your other, longer explanation, kazinator). I still feel that downvotes should have an explanation attached, as there is some negativity expressed in downvoting, but I realise that probably isn't going to happen.

I just wish it wasn't at the top of every page. When it changes I just have to look. I don't mind up or down or whatever, but I just have to look... :)

Nothing you can't fix with a small bit of black tape.

Or CSS. Which is worse than black tape.

One of the things I like about HN is that there really doesn't appear to be an "average community member" - a lot of opinionated knowledgeable people who have differing views.

[It would be fun to try and come of a set of user stereotypes for HN - but there would be quite a few...]

That may be true but there are definitely common threads of things that always do well on HN (some of which I agree with so this is not necessarily a critique).

Submission Topics:

  * Pro-privacy
  * Pro-big tech corporations (Apple, Google, even Microsoft)
  * Optimism about technology in general
  * Press releases about big funding rounds
  * Literally any blog post from Sam or pg.
  * Most blog posts from some other pillar of the tech world.

Comments on Popular Submissions:

  * Agree with the original submission's premise and back it up with an anecdote 
  or citations nobody will ever click on.
  * Ask a question that is really gentle and allows people to respond agreeing 
  with the original article.
  * Defend against anyone who actually criticizes a submission that is doing well.

If you've been here long enough you will be easily able to identify the patterns of things that will always do well, and the things that will always do poorly.

Some other patterns I've identified:

Submission Topics:

  * Any news related to Tesla, SpaceX and Elon Musk.
  * Space.
  * Rocket launch events with live streaming.
  * Anti-big tech corporations, in context of privacy.
  * Dietetics. Will always bring a lot of flamewar.
  * Show HNs.
  * Completely random Wikipedia article that describes something interesting.

Comments on Popular Submissions:

  * One to five words of disagreement (usually flagkilled).
  * Comments debunking lies, mistakes and omissions in mainstream news coverage,
    often by someone directly or indirectly involved in the article's subject matter.
  * 'tokenadult posting a wall of text from whatever personal wiki he's maintaining,
    usually full of interesting facts and citations; almost always a top comment,
    deservingly so.

And I must say, I love all of them. For those of us who hang out a lot here, HN is a community.

One could argue that "opinionated knowledgeable people" is already a pretty specific demographic

>>" It's content that's king. That's good news for Hacker News because it indicates that what matters there is content and not game playing". <<

If that were the case I should have much more Karma. The fact is many times I posted a submission, only to see it slip off the headline in 0.2ms. Then a few days later, someone else (with more Karma) posts the same thing and it stays on for 2 days ... I'm not complaining, simply stating that it is not as cut and dry as the author mentions.

The frontpage algorithm weighs more heavily for those who have previously made frontpage, right?

I assume so. Last few weeks I've been able to get frontpage repeatedly with very few upvotes.

Somewhere I remember dang saying so to my account.

In theory, that shouldn't happen. HN should detect duplicates and just add an upvote to the existing submission when it is resubmitted.

In practice, it happens quite a lot. The duplicate detector is easily fooled, and often the same underlying "story" is reported in a bunch of places.

Getting traction on an HN submission is very random. Unless it's about discrimination in tech work, at which point it will be flagged off the front page almost immediately.

Also, duplicates are only detected for (I think) 8 hours. After that you can resubmit.

The duplicate detector is a bit odd. Not sure what its rules are, but it doesn't always seem to work. One example (only noticed this because I wrote the linked blog post.)

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8860103 : http://reactionwheel.net/2015/01/80s-vc.html
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8908463 : http://reactionwheel.net/2015/01/80s-vc.html?newpost
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8927285 : http://reactionwheel.net/2015/01/80s-vc.html
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9129911 : http://reactionwheel.net/2015/01/80s-vc.html

Something that shouldn't be overlooked is the fact the author is John Graham-Cumming and you are kelvin0. Almost every one in the top 10 leaderboard posts under their real name. They have more respect and credibility than an anonymous poster. It's one of those annoying and readily exploitable flaws of human nature.

Also, I clicked on kelvin0 and the only thing the profile says is YCOMT which appears to be You Came On My Tits (at least according to Google).

That being said, we can clearly not conclude that 'content is king', right? If 'Meta' profile information biases submissions negatively? As mentionned earlier, I am not complaining simply stating a fact. As for YCOMT, it's from a funny episode of a comedy Show I used to watch ... live and learn I guess.

> That being said, we can clearly not conclude that 'content is king', right?

In my humble opinion, yes, content is not king. But, it's more than just allowing people to put a face to the name. You have to fit in. You have to agree with the political views of the majority. You have to agree with the taboos of the majority. There's a reason Michael O'Church and Zed Shaw aren't on that leaderboard, despite the quality of the content they posted.

> You have to fit in. You have to agree with the political views of the majority.

No, you don't; the people with lots of karma don't have homogenous expressed political views, so they can't all agree with the majority, either. How you post about your views is a lot more important than what your views are.

One of Zed Shaw's comments got over 1,000 points.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6805807

I keep meaning to reverse-engineer my own submission stats to find out where this nearly 9k karma comes from. A good trick is to post a solid counterpoint as a reply to the currently topmost comment: people are more likely to vote on comments near the top.

I don't agree, I find the most informative posts are usually mid way down its where the meat of the comment section really is.

I'd say that this isn't entirely true.

Those blog posts about HN trends and stats remind me a bit of stuff about SEO. Lots of tricks and hacks, but essentially it boils down to relevant content.

So yeah, you can probably gain a bit of an edge by posting at a certain time of day, or using specific keyword etc. but nothing beats an interesting post or a great comment.

Outside of engineering responses I've noticed "progressive" (regressive left) comments never get down voted.

Basically take anything Randy Marsh would say from latest season of South Park and you'll get up voted. No matter how ridiculous it sounds. Do the same with Cartman and something about minorities and you'll be (rightly so) down voted. There is no balance.

I'm slightly facetious ;)

I downvoted you. Because I often get downvoted for left leaning posts...

There is nothing pro working class about the shit portrayed in South Park.

And now I upvoted this comment just because. I guess my point is that voting on HN seems largely random to me.

Means that the karma system is good.

Anyone can point out what are the features that can be unlocked with more karma? I'd like to know what I'm missing.

You need a small amount of karma to get the flag button.

You need a bit more karma to be able to change the colour of the top bar.

You need a bit more karma to get the downvote button.

I'm not sure whether your average comment karma is used to place your comment on a page.

I worked really hard to get that downvote arrow, but then stopped caring much about karma and probably haven't actually downvoted anything (just like that the option is there). Now I'm off to change my banner color.

That's what I was thinking, is karma really worth the time and effort?

I understand how it helps the forum work well, but for the user doesn't seem much more than a vanity feature. Being able to flag/downvote is something I really don't care about.

> That's what I was thinking, is karma really worth the time and effort?

Score on particular posts is a signal rather than a reward, IMO, and, no, if you are expending effort specifically in order to boost your karma score, its probably not worth it.

Oh, and you need 200 of karma to create a poll.

I'm still not there yet, and I lost a lot of karma because of it. This is a post of mine that got 31 points - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8339667

And it was picked up by somebody with more karma that created a poll about it and gained 71 points on that - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8339900

That was a bit unfair..

10k gets you $10k seed funding for your startup.

Please tell me where to collect my check?

I believe that is Internet money, not real money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_on_Strike

You could make good use of your karma by adding a Hacker News chapter to your User Acquisition book. I would pay some for that.

That's too much work for $10k.

Karma should be worth more in the past since there were fewer voters and fewer submissions.

If "Internet points" like karma motivates people, inflation like this is actually useful to keep people in the community active.

It is also useful in searching for the most popular posts on HN.

A post years ago on HN getting 150 to 200 points may have been the most popular (perhaps most significant) post for a while. We get posts like that daily now.

I sometimes wonder if there are people here (as on reddit) that try to game the system to get upvotes... seems ridiculous as there's no functional purpose of accumulating upvotes here.

I assume that a lot of the top posters spend a large volume of time submitting and commentating on HN-- myself included.

You're going to end up with a few more with this post

It wasn't him that submitted it.

According to the current leaderboard:

11. jgrahamc 55788

In comparison:

100. DiabloD3 18551

You're working too much at your job, and not procrastinating enough. Keep on pushing!

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